A friend mentioned that his favourite part of every performance is when the girls do their bodywaves… one of the simplest moves around. It’s not even a pole trick!

But when he’s watching the difficult tricks during a pole performance, the last thing he wants is to distract the dancers by clapping. Especially if they look like they’re struggling with the moves. What if they get startled and fall?

I went to the studio on Monday just to watch the performances that night, this time taking note of the audience as much as the performers.

Sitting down as part of the crowd, I realised that a regular audience has very different concerns from performers. Unless they’re professional dance judges, the audience doesn’t care if the dancers can nail their tricks or not. They don’t scrutinize the moves for perfect execution, checking to see if toes are gracefully pointed, or if arms are fully extended. Hell, they don’t even care if the dancers stumble and fall! All they’re looking for is to see people having a good time and who enjoy being watched while they dance. And all the clumsiness and missed cues in the world can be overcome by a single smile.

In fact, the audience generally stays silent during pole tricks. But a sexy bodywave, or simple wink and shimmy gets met with crazy appreciation.

So when Po.lita invited me to perform yesterday, I thought, ‘why not! If I can’t do that layback in time, I won’t. And no-one will care! I’ll just smile and do nice bodywaves during my performance and everyone will be happy!”

This time the audience was bigger than on Monday because there were more advanced girls there to perform. Po.lita performed the lapdance routine that she taught this term (cos she’s a bonafide instructor now) with me sitting in the chair and happily smacking her on the butt every now and then.

And when it was my turn to do the inter 2 routine, I went up, had fun, and managed to do a layback in perfect timing for the choreography!

2 Responses to People are easier to please than you think

That’s so exciting, great job! 😀 That’s a great point about the audience finding weird things to go wild over – my boyfriend has mentioned certain moves he likes too, and most of them aren’t that advanced either. It’s so annoying! Haha. I’ve had to force myself to stop changing my recital routine (which I’m performing in 2 weeks) a million times – I have to remind myself, are they really going to like my routine THAT much more if I do a rubber pencil here? No, probably not – then leave it alone!